Apparently, if you own a television (and thank goodness I chucked mine), and had it switched on during the 4th of July, you may have been lucky enough to encounter this utterly unbelievable dadaesque monstrosity of commercial insanity:

I don’t know about you, but if I were paying into an insurance plan, and the company administering that plan were wasting money paying for woo, I’d be mightily pissed. This can only serve to drive up the costs for everyone, as patients with non-self-limiting diseases pursue non-science-based modalities, think they feel better for a while, and then find that their disease is progressing, at which point they seek out science-based medical care–which their insurance companies will have to pay for, too.

This is tossed off as though it ought to be obvious to the ordinary reader. It strikes me as obviously insane. I can think of any number of valid concerns one might have about what sort of porn one’s partner is consuming, or the extent of it. But the proposition that one of them is any similarity between porn viewing and “having an actual affair” would not have occurred to me. Is this view held by any significant number of sane people?

Then consider: Is there any similarity between having sex with a prostitute while you’re married and paying to watch a prostitute perform sexual acts for your voyeuristic gratification? Again, I think a lot of people would say yes: There’s a distinction, obviously, but I don’t think all that many spouses would be inclined to forgive their husbands (or wives) if they explained that they only liked to watch the prostitute they’d hired. And hard-core porn, in turn, is nothing more than an indirect way of paying someone to fulfill the same sort of voyeuristic fantasies: It’s prostitution in all but name, filtered through middlemen, magazine editors, and high-speed internet connections. Is it as grave a betrayal as cheating on your spouse with a co-worker? Not at all. But is it on a moral continuum with adultery? I don’t think it’s insane to say yes.

(Heck, even Dan Dan Savage, sex-adviser extraordinaire, agrees with Ross that “porn as cheating” is quite a common idea.)

Next, quite a lot of Douthat’s commenters seem to lose track of the discussion entirely: they think that Douthat is trying to make an argument that pornography really is perfectly equivalent to having an extra-marital affair, when in fact he’s only trying to illustrate that there are reasonable similarities that might lead some quite sane spouses to consider porn a form of cheating. Much confusion ensues.

Finally, the discussion turns to the issue of the morality of pornography in general. Some people raise the issue of Jesus’ famous pronouncement that to look upon a woman with lust is to commit adultery in your heart. And then, Douthat regular Hector, who seems to believe that pornography is immoral by its “essential nature,” pops in to say that he’s “not sure what any of you would maintain are the good things that porn brings into this world.”

What’s good about porn? It’s hard to even know where to start: it’s the question an alien visitor the the earth might ask, like “what good is baseball?” It’s a question that must seem obvious to some, utterly bizarre to others.

The gist of the her complaint goes something like this: “It’s just awful that cooking magazines don’t take time out to bemoan the crucifixion, am I right, ladies?” Oy. Veh.

What’s always so baffling in these sorts of articles is how these writers manage to turn the choice of people or businesses to be more ecumenical in their holiday celebrations into, as Allen calls it, a “campaign to force everyone to say, “Happy Holiday!” The very idea that there is such a sinister campaign is, of course, absurd, but the paranoia and simple incapacity to distinguish between a voluntary lack of partisan religiosity and some sort of totalitarian thought campaign its what’s troubling. And, amongst religious conservatives, all too common.

Statements like the following never fail to stun me with their sheer obliviousness:

Still, it is sad and disconcerting that the oldest and holiest of Christian festivals is simply ignored by the media (and almost everyone else), and that Christians have acquiesced to the near-disappearance of their highest feast day from public consciousness.

But of course, the only reason “Christians” have “acquiesced” is that they apparently, voluntarily, aren’t as interested in promoting their religious observances as if it were a QVC product. And so what? If, on the other hand, lots of Christians decide that they don’t like the state of affairs that so troubles Allen, they are perfectly free to make a big fuss out of the fact that they are Christians celebrating Easter. The point is, it’s a choice, as it should be, not the unfolding of a conspiracy.

Allen concludes by quoting St. Augustine of Hippo: “We are an Easter people.” Who is such a person, though? In our society: whoever wants to be. But if someone isn’t an Easter person, who is Allen, exactly, to tell them that they must be?

This latest article is a worthy addition to that record: a profoundly foolish ode to self-obsession. Her religious practices, her observance are what she looks for everywhere she goes… and society be damned if it is not made in her image.